Many kinds of surgery require the use of multiple sutures that are used to pull severed muscles, nerves and tendons away from the surgery site. One of these surgeries is heart surgery, where multiple sutures are used to repair the mitral vessels. If the sutures are not properly organized, they become tangled and complicate the surgeon's job. To aid the heart surgeon, many suture organizers have been developed, the most common of which is known as the Gabbay-Frater organizer. Examples of this type of device are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,185,636—Gabbay, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,492,229—Grunwald. These heart surgery suture organizers are specific to heart surgery, where the patient is supine and motionless.
Another suture organizer, designed for hysterectomies is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,692,599, which is also useful when the patient is supine and motionless. In these surgeries, gravity is often used to tension the sutures, thus necessitating a motionless surgery site. However, in orthopedic surgeries where ligation of soft tissue, such as muscles, tendons and nerves is necessary, the patient is not supine and the surgery site is not motionless.
These surgeries include joint surgeries, such as common rotator cuff repair surgery. Other similar procedures, involving non-supine and non-motionless surgical site are total shoulder arthroplasty, ORIF shoulder procedure, patellar and quadriceps tendon ruptures, shoulder fractures with hemi replacement, Bankart repairs, and crush injuries affecting multiple tendons and digits of the hand and foot.
During these surgical procedures, the patient is often not in a supine position, and the joint is moved or exercised for soft tissue balancing during the surgery, before the muscles, tendons and nerves are reattached. During these surgical procedures, sutures are attached to the damaged or cut ends of muscles, tendons and nerves, hemostats are attached to the sutures and the surgeon grasps a handful of the hemostats to remove this material and open up the surgical site. During the procedure, the joint is manipulated, which can cause these sutures to become tangled and must be untangled to accurately balance the soft tissue. After the surgery is complete, the hemostats are again manually grasped to pull the ends together to balance the soft tissue; then these cut ends are reattached. Tangled sutures require extra, unneeded surgical staff time during the surgical procedure to untangle these sutures.
The prior art devices, the use of which is predicated on the patient being supine and motionless, are not adaptable to these joint and other surgeries, where motion of the surgical site is common, and where the patient is not usually supine.
There is a need for a clamp and/or suture retainer and organizer that is useful during joint surgery and other surgeries where the surgery site is not necessarily supine and where the surgery site may experience motion during the surgical procedure.